Marathon Endurance Feats : Adventurers Test Mettle for Public, Private Causes

A horseman recently offered to ride across the country to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, if the hospital would sponsor him and would agree not to expect too much, too fast.

“He said he’d have to go slowly because his broken leg hadn’t quite healed since the last time the horse threw him,” recalled Bill Kirwen of St. Jude’s in Memphis, Tenn. “Imagine the liability problems we could face. We thanked him and said no.”

Then there were the canoeists who volunteered to paddle to South America on behalf of the American Cancer Society, if the charity would pay their expenses.

“We said, ‘But how do we know you can make it?’ ” recalled Irving Rimer, a spokesman for the Cancer Society in New York. “After all, we’re not going to risk someone’s life. And there’s no connection between the cancer society and canoeing anyway.”

Charities are not the only focal points of such adventurers. The marathon endurance feat seems to be the newest spinoff of the physical fitness movement in the United States. There is hardly a cause that hasn’t inspired someone to take off across the country on its behalf lately.

For instance, Ron Sadowsky has reached the halfway point on his run from Boston to Los Angeles to raise money for the animal rights movement. So far, he reported from St. Paul, Minn., he has taken in about $8,000, as well as five stray dogs who chased him along the way and “a schnauzer with a limp that I carried for a mile and a half.”

Ron Villareale of Brockton, Mass., dressed in colonial garb, just passed the 3,000-mile mark on horseback in his grass-roots campaign to call attention to American servicemen missing in Indochina. “Next, I hope to go to President Reagan’s ranch (in Santa Barbara) and give him my horse, American Thunder,” he said recently in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Allen Pepke of New Haven, Mich., recently went out for a 625-mile walk in Army fatigues and combat boots to show the military that it was wrong when it rejected him for bad feet. Pepke, 18, was nearing the end of his personal forced march Saturday when he was contacted by the office of Michigan Gov. James Blanchard, which said the Army had changed its mind and would induct him.

It’s ‘Very Inspiring’

“People are running, biking, walking and skating across this country back and forth over and over again,” Rimer said, calling the trend “very inspiring.” He added: “I even heard from one wonderful young man who is walking across the country, playing his bagpipe, to raise money for us. He didn’t even ask for expenses.”

“I think these long-distance demonstrations have become a part of our culture,” said Gene Jeffers of the American Red Cross, which recently sponsored two cross-country bicyclists. “Look how many people are in the New York Marathon now (19,000 ran Sunday) compared to 10 years ago (535).”

Handicapped athletes also are performing more and more prodigious feats, inspired in part by the parallel increase of wheelchair athletes in such events as the 1984 Olympics.

Jim Letherer of Raleigh, N.C., and Jerry Traylor of Parkersburg, W. Va., recently completed separate walks across the nation on crutches for charities.

Traylor, afflicted with cerebral palsy, went through four pairs of crutches and more than 30 crutch tips as well as 17 pairs of tennis shoes. “If you can run across the country on crutches, then people can achieve any of the goals they put their minds to,” he said.

No need to tell it to Bob Wieland of Arcadia. He recently said hello to Dayton, Ohio, having walked more than 2,323 miles for charity--on his hands. His legs were blown off in Vietnam.

Wieland, 39, whose gear includes special covering for his hands and an orange reflecting jacket, plotted a course of about 5 million yard-long steps when he set out on Sept. 8, 1982.

The coldest weather he has encountered was 26 below zero (with the wind-chill factor) near Joplin, Mo. “That,” he said, “was relatively challenging.”

‘Working My Way’

Disappointed that he could find just two sponsors, he also delivers motivational lectures on his route to defray expenses. “I’m working my way across America,” he said from Dayton.

The individual cited more than any other by country-crossers as an inspiration is Terry Fox, the late Canadian marathoner.

Fox, despite having lost a leg to cancer, attempted to run the length of Canada to raise money to fight the disease in 1980. He made it more than halfway--about 2,000 miles--before dying at age 22. He raised $24 million.

As a tribute to Fox, Boston College graduate Jeff Keith, who had also lost a leg to cancer, ran across the United States, climaxing his eight-month ordeal with an exultant leap into the Pacific Ocean. Keith, who received a congratulatory phone call from President Reagan, raised a large sum for the American Cancer Society--about $250,000--but far less than Fox raised.

“Terry Fox’s case had some special circumstances,” the American Cancer Society’s Rimer pointed out. “First, Canadians don’t have very many sports heroes. And second, it was after he (Fox) went back into the hospital that the tremendous expressions of generosity really began.

“Jeff’s feat was more important as an educational project, a demonstration of his solid recovery from cancer. He stopped at a lot of hospitals where he could tell cancer patients, ‘I lost a leg. I had the hair loss. I had the severe depression period. But look at what I can do!’ ”

Beer Keg Fell Flat

Although they undoubtedly are inspirational, cross-country runs for charities aren’t automatic successes as fund-raisers.

“The money doesn’t just roll in,” said Kirwen of St. Jude’s. “We once sponsored a fraternity that was pushing a beer keg across the country to raise money. The fellows would go through a town and people would just look and say, ‘Isn’t that nice.’ ”

Of two young men who collected $5,000 for the Red Cross on a cross-country bicycle ride, spokesman Jeffers said: “To be honest, if you took all the energy they put into it and put it into fund-raising development, you’d probably come out with more money. But they were planning to make the trip anyway. So it was nice that they were able to bring in some money.”

One problem is that gaining publicity along the way--an essential of fund raising--isn’t easy.

“When there are so many brave people (going across the country), it starts to lose some of the drama after a while,” Rimer said. “The media is more likely to record just starts and finishes. The Olympic Torch Relay got a lot of publicity, but there you had new people taking the torch all the time.”

Another manifestation of the cross-country charity event is the just-revealed HandsAcrossAmerica, a chain of people scheduled to link hands over at least 16 states on Memorial Day to raise money to feed hungry Americans.

When non-charitable causes are involved--such as the Washington-to-South Carolina walk of six women for nuclear disarmament or the Walk-America-for-Life campaign of an anti-abortionist pastor--success is difficult to gauge.

Many of the participants seem to feel, however, that whatever the results, they had no choice but to get involved.

“It’s the duty of every citizen,” said Villareale, 39, who became interested in the MIA/POW issue after a friend’s brother was listed as missing in combat.

Since leaving Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1984, Villareale and his horse have had “about 1,000 close-calls with idiots (drivers) playing chicken with me.”

Beverly Hills Citation

In Indianapolis, someone stole the saddle off American Thunder in a parking lot. News reports of the theft led to a donation of another saddle. In Arizona, his support van was stolen. A file cabinet containing letters he had collected from more than 100 mayors was found emptied out along a road. And in Beverly Hills on Saturday, he was cited by police for riding a horse on a city street (Wilshire Boulevard).

The personal meeting with Reagan has yet to materialize.

A self-employed building contractor, Villareale estimates that the journey in honor of missing American servicemen has cost him $10,000.

But, he said, “you just can’t put a dollar value on the lives of those men.”